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NEWPORT NEWS — Ella Spratley, whom the Spratley House senior public housing in the Southeast Community is named after, died on June 15. She was 91.

Mrs. Spratley was a longtime activist and former Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Authority commissioner. She was an elections worker and also a civil rights activist during the 1960s.

In the 1940s, Mrs. Spratley refused to get off of a segregated, all-white bus that was headed to Washington Avenue, where she wanted to shop, according to a 1998 story in the Daily Press.

"Sir, my brother fought in the Battle of the Bulge (in World War II), and he wasn't there just for you. How dare you ask us to leave this bus! I'm not leaving this bus until you get orders from Washington," Spratley told men who had ordered her off the bus.

Mrs. Spratley won that battle and stayed on the bus, several years before Rosa Parks sparked the Civil Rights Movement in 1955 by famously refusing to budge from her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala.

She grew up poor in public housing in the Southeast Community, off of Ivy Avenue, and she described a childhood where she often went hungry. As an adult, she became active in Democratic Party politics, serving as a delegate at state conventions and working on campaigns.

Mrs. Spratley served on the housing authority board from 1990-94, and the Spratley House, when it opened in the late 1990s, was named in her honor.

"She was always an advocate for public housing, especially for senior citizens," said Karen Wilds, Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Authority executive director.

"During the grand opening, she read a poem that she had written, and she often would express herself in poetry," Wilds said.